Please join MWPA and Mechanics' Hall for a special book launch featuring Jeri Theriault and her latest poetry collection, Self-Portrait as Homestead. Jeri will be joined by special guests Philip Carlsen, Carl Dimow, and Larissa Vigue Picard.
Self-Portrait as Homestead focuses on family and heritage, specifically the Franco-American culture Jeri experienced growing up in Waterville Maine.
Of this collection, Leslie Ullman, poet, writes, “Every gesture flies off the page in its caress of language, also evoking the iconic loneliness of women in the speaker’s past and in history itself. The result? A redemptive empathy for self and ancestor, the well-earned gift of a generation of women who have paid the price of breaking free and now step forth to bear honest witness and break old patterns.”
Longfellow Books will be on hand to sell books.
This is a free event, and we ask that you please RSVP and save your seat by clicking on the orange button.
Jeri Theriault, a Franco-American poet, grew up in Waterville, Maine and graduated from Colby College, later earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry collections include Radost, my red and In the Museum of Surrender. She is the editor of WAIT: Poems from the Pandemic. Her poems and reviews have appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, The Texas Review, The Atlanta Review, Asheville Poetry Review, and Plume. Recent awards include the 2023 Maine Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the 2023 Monson Arts Fellowship and the 2022 NORward Prize (New Ohio Review). Jeri lives in South Portland. You can read more about her work at https://www.jeritheriault.com.
Philip Carlsen has received many commissions and awards for his compositional work, including performances at New York’s Town Hall and the Kennedy Center. Retired in 2015 from the University of Maine at Farmington, he currently plays cello in the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra, the Buttonwood Piano Trio, and the early music group St. Mary Schola, as well as in more experimental ventures with Carl Dimow and others.
Flutist and guitarist Carl Dimow is an eclectic musician whose performances include jazz, klezmer, Brazilian choro, and a wide variety of improvised music. Current projects include the Carl Dimow Jazz Quartet, the Casco Bay Tummlers klezmer band, Choro Louco and various special projects such as this one. More at carldimow.com.
A native Mainer, Larissa Vigue Picard has been Executive Director of Pejepscot History Center since 2015. She has served on statewide and local boards, and is a volunteer in the school system. Formerly, she was Director of Education at Maine Historical Society in Portland. For about half of the 15 years she spent in Vermont, Larissa was Director of Community Programs at Vermont Humanities Council. She also taught in the community college system and worked as a freelance writer. She holds degrees in English Literature from Bates and Middlebury Colleges.